As Santa Clara County continues to buckle under the strain of federal budget cuts, more than 100 people attended a Town Hall meeting on Tuesday in hopes of saving allcove Palo Alto, a youth wellness center that students say is indispensable to mental health and suicide prevention work.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Abe-Koga hosted the Oct. 28 event at the Palo Alto Art Center to gauge what programs youth rely on most as Santa Clara County, which uses half of its $13 billion budget on health and hospital systems, faces massive budget cuts under President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
“Frankly, we’re looking at right now a target of $800 million to cut in this coming year’s budget, 26-27 cycle, and it’s an across-the-board cut,” she said. “Every department has been given a target to match, including behavioral health.”
The county funds allcove Palo Alto and is looking at making changes, including staff and service reductions, under current financial hardships. But youth speakers at the packed event made one thing clear: allcove was worth saving in its full capacity.
When Tess Manjarrez attended Palo Alto High School from 2015 to 2019, she didn’t know about allcove, she said at the town hall.
“I don’t think there was anyone at Paly who was more than two degrees separated from someone that took their own life,” she said. “It’s part of the culture. It twists you.”
But when Manjarrez finally found allcove as a young adult, she realized it was a place youth could retreat to without the permission of their parents to access free therapy, health care, peer counseling and even help with college applications.
“It’s life-saving,” she said. “It really, really is life-saving. I can get to allcove before I am off hold from the crisis hotline.”
Allcove Palo Alto, which opened in 2021, was adapted from a similar model called Headspace in Australia and was the first of its kind in the state, later expanding to four other locations, with one more pending in Sacramento. Local youth designed nearly every aspect of the center, from its services and its name to its floor plans and pillows.
Today, it offers a calm environment for youth to relax, socialize, receive mental and physical health care, peer support, substance use counseling, career coaching and more.
Allcove has served nearly 1,500 youth since its inception and currently employs approximately 12 employees.
“Over 70% of young people who visit allcove say they would not have sought help elsewhere,” said Stanford Professor of Psychiatry Shashank Joshi, who has worked on local suicide prevention efforts for over a decade.
It will cost approximately $3.4 million to operate allcove during 2026, said County Behavioral Health Services Deputy Director Megan Wheelehan. Santa Clara County relies on the California Mental Health Services Act Prevention and Early Intervention funds to pay for allcove, which are being taken away from local counties, she said.
Despite these massive cuts, local mental health experts say centers like allcove rarely close entirely.
“Youth, trust and engagement cannot be recreated quickly elsewhere,” Joshi said. “The relationships and credibility that have been built since the site first opened would be lost.”
Allcove is an opportunity to stand by a model that youth have created to bolster mental health treatment before it’s too late, he said.
About a dozen students spoke about the positive effects allcove has had on them growing up in the region and Palo Alto, a city that is now facing its third suicide cluster, a period when multiple deaths by suicide occur in a short time frame.
Students, some as young as in seventh grade, said allcove was a “safe place” that reduced their anxiety and helped them during mental health crises, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. One speaker said that after attempting suicide at 13 years old, allcove was the only place that gave her a sense of community.
“I know there are hundreds of students just like me who cannot go to their parents, who feel like there’s this barrier between other resources offered at school, other resources that don’t feel as accessible as allcove does,” said Alina, a youth advisor at allcove.
The county is set to make more final decisions about service cuts at a December 16 Health and Hospital Committee meeting and local advocates hope to host more town halls in the future as they figure out how to address financial hardships.
“I don’t want to get rid of allcove,” Abe-Koga said. “That’s not my intention. But we’ve shared, in terms of our budget situation … everything is on the table right now.”
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